


No Monsters Under The Bed

by Jen425



Series: A Hundred Heroes Welcome You Home [39]
Category: Kamen Rider - All Media Types, Kamen Rider Gaim, Tokusatsu
Genre: Angst, Bonding, Brotherly Angst, Gen, Nightmares, Post-ep 46, Regrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24700636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425
Summary: The thing is… Takatora doesn’t really know how to fix things.
Relationships: Kureshima Mitsuzane & Kureshima Takatora
Series: A Hundred Heroes Welcome You Home [39]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782238
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21





	No Monsters Under The Bed

**Author's Note:**

> Love these boys.
> 
> To be clear: I do not condone Micchy’s actions but I also recognize that Takatora was kind of a shitty older brother
> 
> Also Micchy makes the most pathetic sobbing noises I have ever heard and I love it

The sobbing is quiet, broken, squeaking things, each one, but quiet.

Takatora listens. He listens because it’s the first time since the day he’d awoken that Mitsuzane had shown him anything but complete emotionlessness and deference (a heartbreaking realization of how normal it seemed on his brother, familiar from years past), quiet simple responses and a thin frame showing how little he’d taken care of himself. Haunted eyes and a flinch yet resolved look every time Takatora reaches to touch him, as if expecting an attack and equally expecting to take it.

He listens because Mitsuzane never tells him no, wanders all day but always comes home just as quiet, just as obedient and this time with truly nothing under the surface because this time Takatora is careful, so he hasn’t once entered Mitsuzane’s room without a quiet “yes” to acknowledge him.

Most of all, Takatora listens because he hasn’t once comforted the boy since they were young, assuming that Mitsuzane would come if he needed it but had grown strong enough to not.

But he’d been wrong in every way, and now his brother is sobbing in his room at night and he doesn’t know what to do.

And then Mitsuzane goes quiet, for a long moment.

And then the tears start, more muted.

“I’m sorry,” Mitsuzane chokes out, at that point, quietly, and devolves into a near-chant of names. The other dancers, Takatora had asked him to tell, for once taking advantage of his brother’s painful emptiness.

Takatsukasa Mai and Kazuraba Kouta echo the most off his lips, and Takatora has been here for five minutes at least, but _Mitsuzane hasn’t stopped_.

The moment “Nii-san” joins the list, however, he opens the door. He doesn’t realize how quickly he does until he hears said door slam and watches his little brother, still a child, just as so many of the other Riders were children, perhaps are still so, curled up on the bed in the darkness, jump.

“Mitsuzane…” Takatora says, voice trailing off into awkward oblivion.

That’s about when Takatora realizes he still has no idea what to do.

“N-nii-san,” Mitsuzane says again, but this time properly directed towards you. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Takatora asks, because processing the obvious answer and all it entails is too complicated, not when Mitsuzane’s actions had been in part his own failure to care for his brother, not when he knows what the boy had put _himself_ through, since.

And he _is_ a boy, especially right now. Not an innocent, they’d crossed that line a long time ago, but still a child.

Mitsuzane seems to share the sentiment, however, because he just shakes his head.

“Nevermind,” he says, and then unbelievably quietly but still decipherable, he adds “You’re the real one; he always knew what to say.”

“Mitsuzane, I…” Takatora tries. “Did I wake you?”

“No, Nii-san.”

He takes a few steps into the room, noting the clothes across the floor and no other signs of life, even, or perhaps especially, in the dark.

He also finally notes that Mitsuzane isn’t dressed, bare, bony arms curled around pulled up legs hidden by a thick black blanket.

He’s never seen him undressed since awakening, Takatora realizes. Mitsuzane was always slim, but that was… well, he hadn’t known, but that was the build of a dancer.

Now his is one of someone malnourished, which perhaps he is. Takatora knows how little he eats, at home.

The only time Mitsuzane hasn’t been compliant is on that question, though, so Takatora has been careful to press gently.

He can’t mess up this second chance, to heal both Yggdrasill’s actions and his own.

“I am sorry, though,” Mitsuzane says, again. “I… I did so many terrible things, I even… I’m really just your shadow.”

…He had said that, hadn’t he? It’s hard to clearly remember the fight itself, however. He…

He walks all the way to Mitsuzane’s side and places a hand on a trembling shoulder.

“I am sorry, as well,” he says. “All this time, I thought I had done the best for you, and yet…”

A small shake of his head.

“No, Nii-san,” he says. “I’m… I’m my own monster.”

And Takatora still doesn’t know what to do. He hasn’t had to comfort his brother since the monsters in the darkness were imaginary, instead of very real and tangible regrets, in the still-more-empty streets of Zawame.

He understands regrets, though.

And so, carefully, he sits on the bed and pulls Mitsuzane into a hug, as the boy falls apart.

“I’m sorry,” Mitsuzane sobs.

“I know,” Takatora replies.

He thinks, he _hopes…_ that they’ll talk properly in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @flaim-ita or @dancingqueen-mai for just Toku


End file.
